Direct Detection of Type II-P Supernova Progenitors with the Euclid and CSST Surveys

TL;DR

Euclid and CSST surveys will greatly enhance the detection and characterization of supernova progenitors, especially red supergiants, by providing deep, high-resolution, multi-band imaging, enabling more accurate mass and dust property measurements.

Contribution

This study demonstrates the detection capabilities of Euclid and CSST for supernova progenitors and proposes methods to recover their intrinsic properties despite circumstellar dust effects.

Findings

Detection rate of progenitors will increase by an order of magnitude.

Optical and near-infrared filters are highly effective for detecting RSG progenitors.

Simultaneous fitting of SEDs can recover progenitor mass and dust optical depth.

Abstract

A central goal in supernova (SN) research is to identify and characterize their progenitors. However, this is very difficult due to the limited archival images with sufficient depth and spatial resolution required for direct progenitor detection and due to the circumstellar dust which often biases the estimate of their intrinsic parameters. This field will be revolutionized by Euclid and the upcoming Chinese Space Station Survey Telescope (CSST), which conduct deep, wide-field, high-resolution and multi-band imaging surveys. We analyze their detection capability by comparing the model magnitudes of red supergiant (RSG) progenitors with the detection limits under different conditions, and we estimate the annual detection rates with Monte-Carlo simulations. We explore how to recover the intrinsic properties of SN progenitors with the help of radiation transfer calculations in circumstellar dust. We find the optical and near-infrared filters of the Euclid and CSST are highly effective for detecting RSG progenitors. We predict that archival images from the completed 2 surveys will enable $\lesssim13$ (or 24) progenitor detections per year within the mass range of 8--16 (or 8--25)M_\odot, an order of magnitude higher than the current detection rate of $\sim1$ detection per year. In the presence of circumstellar dust, the emerging spectral energy distribution (SED) of the progenitor is mainly affected by the optical depth and is almost independent of dust temperature in the Euclid and CSST filters. Our mock tests demonstrate that one can derive the progenitor mass and dust optical depth simultaneously by fitting the observed SED over the 11 filters of the 2 surveys while fixing the dust temperature to a typical value. Euclid and CSST will significantly enlarge the sample of direct progenitor detections with accurate mass measurements, which is crucial to resolve the long-standing RSG problem.